Opinion: 3 things Chicago must do to fight corruption

Follow @csteditorialsLast month, a federal grand jury indicted Ald. Willie Cochran (20th) on 15 counts of fraud, bribery, theft and extortion. This indictment is a result of years of work by the FBI, the U.S. attorney’s office and Chicago’s now-defunct Office of the Legislative Inspector General, the office I ran for four years.

While the indictment lists Ald. Cochran, it could simply have listed the Chicago Way, this city’s disgraceful political culture evidenced by the number of elected officials who have gone to jail decade after decade.

So how does Chicago change this culture of corruption that has been ingrained over so many years?

The city needs to start all over, and there are three steps that will make this possible:

First, Chicago’s archaic and weak ethics ordinance must be rewritten from beginning to end. Elected officials must be required to disclose full financial data to prevent conflicts of interest, penalties for ethics violations must be strengthened and enforced, and lobbyist loopholes must be eliminated. Lobbyists shouldn’t be allowed to infiltrate City Hall by masking their titles or salary sources — as the 42nd Ward recently saw.

The law must be written in a way that protects taxpayer interests, not government and individual players.

Second, the Chicago Board of Ethics must be reformed and rebuilt. Nicknamed “the do-nothing” body, the BOE has turned a blind eye to corruption and protected Chicago’s politicians, rather than its taxpayers.

It also has ignored investigations, changed rules and defended aldermen to allow them to bend and break the law. But the public rarely sees any of this because the BOE refuses to put out annual reports — even though they are required by law.

These reports must be issued and show in detail what ethics investigations are acted upon, which aldermen break rules and what punishments are handed down. Elected officials need to know there is real oversight and real enforcement of ethics laws. Federal indictments can no longer be the only deterrent to corruption.

Finally, Chicago’s oversight offices should be consolidated and given more power and freedom to initiate investigations without interference from City Hall.

There are currently five inspectors general offices in Chicago overseeing: City Hall employees, Chicago Public Schools, City Colleges of Chicago, the Chicago Housing Authority and the Chicago Park District. There were seven separate offices just two years ago. All these separate offices have different rules, policies and budgets governing them, which creates inefficiencies and unnecessary challenges to oversight.

Every inspector general in Chicago should be put into one office of investigations, with departments focusing on different government sectors and offices. This office of inspectors general should have an independent budget and the independent authority to conduct investigations; one office, one law, one standard, one budget.

Chicago doesn’t like to give oversight offices much authority or freedom. But with ethical and budget crises plaguing the city, oversight agencies must be joined and streamlined to maximize taxpayer dollars, efficiency and effectiveness.

And no matter how they are organized, all of Chicago’s oversight agencies must have the ability to release investigations publicly and allow taxpayers to know if their representatives are breaking the law.

An elected official has been indicted for corruption … it’s become Bill Murray’s “Groundhog Day” in Chicago. This scene has become the accepted cultural norm in Chicago, and without change, we will continue reliving the same tale over and over again.

But Ald. Cochran’s indictment shows that effective oversight and true ethics enforcement are possible. If Chicagoans demand reform and elected officials are forced to listen, this familiar storyline could — and hopefully will — be played out for its final time.

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